PS3 Hacker Didn't Flee, Did Hand Over Hard Drives, Says Lawyer

The attorney for George Hotz, the hacker being sued by Sony for jailbreaking the PlayStation 3, denies that Hotz fled to South America to avoid a court order and says he has delivered his impounded hard drives as required to a neutral party. Sony, in a court filing, had alleged the drives were delivered with parts missing, and Hotz left the country to avoid providing them.

Stewart Kellar, Hotz's attorney, said Sony's claim that the drives were missing "integral components", concerned "stock controller cards, not the hard drives themselves," Kellar told IGN. "The neutral [party]subsequently had to explain to SCEA the form and function of hard drive controller cards. Those controller cards have since been provided to the neutral so the point is moot."

Kellar, while he didn't say Hotz was not in South America, shot down allegations that Hotz used donation money, mostly grass-roots donations raised over the internet, to travel there, and disputed its characterisation as Hotz "fleeing" from justice, which in this case is a civil lawsuit, not criminal charges.

"As for any question as to whether Mr. Hotz has used donation money to take a trip to South America, that's pretty silly. Litigating against a massive company like Sony, who is represented by five attorneys, is very costly for a 21-year-old," Kellar told IGN. "The donation money George has received is being used exclusively for his legal defence. If there are any funds left after the lawsuit, George is planning to donate the money to the [Electronic Frontier Foundation] ."

Don't be hating on Geohot. I mean sure, his personality makes you want to punch the guy the face, but he just wanted to get back features that were promised and then taken away. It's Sony who has blown this whole thing out of proportion, showing their true colors and acting like sore losers.

Sony took the features out due to piracy, and it is people like him who we have to blame. He wanted to run linux for homebrew?? BULLSHIT!! He wanted it for pirating games just like 99% of all of the other people who are winging about it.

They removed OtherOS because it got hacked, which exposed a security flaw which had the potential to enable piracy if left unaddressed.

If the hackers/homebrewers had just used the feature as it was offered to them, everybody would be happy. They could have their homebrew, and the PS3 would have remained secure. Win win. But instead they had to hack it, which didn't leave Sony much option other than to respond to the threat.

And guess who it was that hacked it?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-ps3hacked-article

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/geohot-releases-hack-for-ps3

And note that Sony didn't send the lawyers in back then. Presumably by the time he published their encryption key to go with failoverflow's work then they'd had enough of him. You can only poke a dog with a stick so many times before it turns around and tries to bite you.

"If the hackers/homebrewers had just used the feature as it was offered to them, everybody would be happy."

"... it’s the tinkering of their software that you never own that has pissed them off."

There is this crazy idea around that if you pay money for something, whoever you purchased it from shouldn't then be able to take bits of it back, modify any bits that are left and then certainly not raid your home and take it all away from you just after you finally figured out a way of improving what you bought.

Their software wasn't tinkered with, it remains unmodified, but because their security was so poorly implemented a way to pretend to be official was observed and a method widely documented. Geohot did not distribute the keys required to do this, just pointed everyone else in the right direction.

If you keep buying from Sony you really shouldn't complain when they ask you to bend over and spread those cheeks apart. As a Sony customer you should expect to get fucked - they've been behaving this way and pulling these tricks for years.

Sony are not being sore losers there machine has been illegally hacked for piracy and he is playing the whole "they took features away" card. I want Sony to win there the only old.school console maker left. Nintendo sold out and ms just use there limitless balance to compete unfairly. I say go Sony protect your little black box.

Actually you purchase a licence to use the software (the OS) which you agree to when you purchase it. You did not create the software, you agreed to pay a fee to have acess to it, you do not have the right to modify it in anyway.

Sony don't give a **** what you do with the physical components of your PS3 (which you own). And in fact they ENCOURAGE you to use non Sony parts (harddrives, headsets, etc). They do care what you do with the software (including firmware) which you do NOT own, but are just licensed to use.

Likewise Holden don't care what you do with the physical components of the car after you buy it. You can put non-genuine parts in it (although it'd probably void your warranty) or even chop it to pieces and wear the parts on your head in a horserace if you like. They won't care because it's just the physical components, you're not interfering with their intelletual property.

Story time! I went to an all-girls’ school. My friends and I had that special bond of closeness that apparently comes with synced-up periods and measuring the length of each other’s winter leg hair.
This, obviously, led to a brief era of trying to catch one of the others unawares with the most impressive, most unexpected spank possible. We’re talking sneaking up behind each other in the hallway and laying one down that made the earth shake. If I couldn’t read your palm from the imprint, you weren’t doing a good enough job.